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What's the future of the ATM industry?

The sixth edition of the ATM Future Trends report, which includes the results of an extensive survey and industry insights from ATM thought leaders, is available.

What's the future of the ATM industry?Photo by iStock.com


| by Amy Castor — Editor, Networld Media Group

Consumers are paying less frequently with cash and credit cards but still want to see more ATMs deployed, according to the sixth edition of the ATM Future Trends report, which is now available.

Those are just a few of the findings from the biennial report, which included a survey of more than 300 consumers in the U.S. and 200 stakeholders representing every aspect of the ATM industry.

The 43-page report also includes information to help retailers and financial institutions set goals and strategies for their ATM channel or businesses.

In addition to an overview of the state of the industry, the report discusses how the upgrade to Windows 10 is impacting the industry. By January 2020, financial institutions that have upgraded operating systems risk running ATMs on an unsecured platform. 

The upgrade comes at no small cost and could result in a reduction in the total number of ATMs deployed. In some cases it may not be worth the expense to upgrade older machines, according to the report. 

Aravinda Korala, CEO of ATM software company Kal, said in the report that deployers of older ATMs could save money by not having to upgrade motherboards during an operating system upgrade. He believes the costs of upgrading will continue to increase.

"Looking ahead, things could get even worse for the industry as the new strategy for Windows is to increase the frequency of OS upgrades and enhancements," he said in the report. 

The report includes industry insights from other ATM thought leaders as well. 

ATMs will become the banks of the future as more branches close, said Bill Versen, chief product officer at Transaction Network Services, in the report. He believes ATMs will adopt biometric identifiers like fingerprint and facial recognition to enable cardless usage. They'll also include "services as diverse as applying for loans, buying lottery tickets and dispensing foreign currency," he said.  

The key driver of ATM industry changes is global saturation, said Daryl Cornell, CEO at Triton Systems, a maker of ATMs. "The ATM ecosystem is no different than any other cyclical industry, where participants ride the growth wave profitably for years or decades before the inevitable peak and subsequent decline."     

Others, like Octavio Marquez, senior vice president and managing director of banking Americas, at Diebold Nixdorf, the largest manufacturer of ATMs, shared a more optimistic view on the future of ATMs. He said cash machines are crucial to the lives of consumers and still offer an essential service. With a half million installations in the U.S., ATMs "remain the primary, most convenient and most reliable way to retrieve cash," he said. 

Here are a few highlights from the survey: 

  • Consumer preference for cash as a payment method has declined 4% since 2017, as has a preference for credit cards. Debit cards experienced a 3% increase in popularity as a payment method and 5% of respondents preferred a mobile wallet in 2019.
  • The percentage of respondents who thought the U.S. had "enough" ATMs plunged from 57% in 2017 to 39% in 2019. The percentage who said the U.S. has too few free-to-use ATMs also saw a significant jump — from 17% in 2017 to 39% in 2019.
  • A larger percentage of respondents said they'd rather have a branch nearby than an ATM (43% in 2019 versus 38% in 2017). Those who said "Neither, I do my banking with a mobile app," increased by 3% to a total of 9% in 2019.

To learn more about the future of ATMs, get the report here.


Amy Castor

Amy Castor has more than 20 years of experience in journalism and mass communications. In the last several years, she has gotten particularly interested cryptocurrencies, blockchain technologies and other evolving forms of payment. Her work has appeared in consumer and trade publications throughout the U.S., including CoinDesk, Forbes, and Bitcoin Magazine. She is now the editor of ATMmarketplace.com and WorldofMoney.com

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